Butterfly Dreaming

She didn't know if this would work, but she had to try. Kes
sat in her room alone, staring into the meditation candle Tuvok had given her,
trying simultaneously to clear her mind and to open it.

The hum of voices all around, the sweet reassuring sound of
life. And below it/above it, resonating, a sense of presence. The
difference between conversations in another room and a booming bass drum in the
holodeck when you're twenty meters away. Unimaginably loud, powerful, a
music that could overwhelm her and sweep her away, annihilate her sense of self
in its rhythm. She focused on the sound, letting it come to her. Push
distractions out of the mind, push away the sweet lilting hum of the music of
thought all around her and hear only one thing. Let the sound of the drum fill
her world, let herself open to it. Chakotay and Tom had both played
instruments like that in the holodeck, different musical traditions but
percussions so loud they filled the world, took her over with the need to dance
and shake. If you let yourself be swept into it you could start to hear the
rest of the music, start to sing along, and then if you were musical you could
"jam" and add your music to it. Kes couldn't play an instrument.
This was her instrument, this was her music.

She let the booming thought fill her world, let its power
surround her. She opened to it and let it fill her, drown out everything
else. It was taking over all her senses. Flashes of light sparked behind her
eyes in time with the thundering rhythm, and her skin prickled as if she sat in
a cloud of electricity.

And then presence noticed her. She felt the
unbearable pressure of a gaze turning, recognizing her, seeing her and
through her and pinning her to reality with the power of nothing more than a
look and she was drowning in it the pressure of the booming sound and the
brilliance in her closed eyes and she screamed. "Q!"

Then all was silence.

Kes carefully opened her eyes. Her captain's visitor was
sprawled on her bed, sideways, head propped on his hand. "Well, now. I
didn't know any of Kathy's little pals could do that. Do you know
exactly how close you came to burning your mind into a charred little cinder? That
would've really endeared me to Kathy, I'm sure. 'You know that Ocampa nurse
you used to have? Well, she tried to read my mind, and... I'm sure you
could hold a very nice funeral for the scraps left over.' Oh, that'd certainly
get me into her pants."

"I had to talk to you. I didn't know another way to
get your attention."

"I hear opening your mouth and flapping your lips works
wonders."

"I didn't know if you'd notice. You only seem to be
paying attention to the Captain."

"Oh, well... there is that. I admit I'm a
little distracted."

"You do know, it isn't going to work. You aren't going
to ever get her to agree to have your child."

"O ye of little faith. I'm a Q. I can do
anything."

"Are you going to rape her? Or control her mind?"
Kes asked evenly.

Q made a disgusted face. "No. I said I'm a Q,
not a Kazon. What sort of lousy mother would she make if she didn't agree to
it?"

"She's not going to agree to it."

"Oh, and you know this because....? Are you claiming
to omniscience now?"

"I don't think you're really omniscient. You know a
lot, but if you were all-knowing, you'd have figured it out already. This
isn't an easy universe to be a woman in. There are a lot of races like the
Kazon, that don't think a woman can lead. And while humans don't have any
trouble following a woman, they would think less of her if she gave her body to
someone she didn't love, or even want, in order to get him to do her a favor,
even if it was a favor that benefited all the humans here. The Captain can't
do anything to jeopardize her command."

"No, I'm not. The Captain could have sex with a man
she loved, or liked a lot, or even someone she just desired. What she can't do
is be a prostitute. She doesn't love you, she doesn't like you all that much,
she doesn't desire you, and she doesn't want to have anyone's child in the
first place. Captain Janeway wouldn't be a very good mother, and she knows
that."

"Oh, to the contrary. I think she'd make a wonderful
mother. She already treats this entire crew as her children."

"And that's why she can't have a real child. Either
we'd suffer the loss of her attention or the child would suffer sharing her
with a whole ship. The Captain wouldn't want to do that to a baby. Not even
to stop a war. So no, she's not going to have your child, and it doesn't
matter how many times you ask, or what you offer. Maybe if you'd made friends
with her ahead of time it might have worked but now she'll always see an
ulterior motive if you try."

His eyes narrowed. "And is that why you risked your
life to summon me? Just to tell me give up, go home and get myself shot?"

"Actually I had another idea in mind." Kes got to
her feet and went over to him where he sat on the bed, standing in front of
him. Like most human males, he had automatically sat with his legs spread,
making room for human-normal oversized genitals. She stood between his legs,
close enough that if she leaned forward too far she'd be bumping her head into
his. "I want you to have a child with me instead."

His eyes went very, very hard. "Do you think you need
to offer yourself up as some kind of sacrifice in your captain's place?
Because it's not impressing me."

"No, I'm not offering to sacrifice myself. I want
to have a baby. With you." She reached out and touched his hair,
lightly. "You can read my mind, can't you?"

"I'd rather not. Going about reading everyone's minds
makes life awfully dull. I do, however, know quite enough to know you aren't
in love with me, nor particularly attracted to me, so you are, as they say on
Earth, full of shit."

She shook her head. "I didn't say I wanted your love.
Or sex. I said I wanted to have your baby. I don't dislike you, Q; the
humans all seem to be very angry at the idea of a powerful being who could put
them at his mercy being anywhere near them, but I've been the slave of a god
who thought he was helping my people by making us his pets, giving us no
freedom. In the records I've read you've never done that. You never asked
anyone to worship you, you never altered anyone's mind, you never imprisoned
people for their own good. You once tried to make Captain Picard say he needed
you but you didn't do it by enslaving him. I respect that."

He disappeared from the slightly compromising position she'd
put him in and reappeared halfway across her room, leaning against the wall,
arms folded. "Let me get this straight. You want to have a child with me
because you respect me for being a powerful being who doesn't run around
pretending to be a god?"

"Well, for all I know you do run around pretending to
be a god, but as far as I know you seem to be more interested in helping the
species you like achieve their potential and solve their own problems, not in
taking care of them until they become completely helpless and dependent on
you. So I respect you. But that's not the main reason." She sat down on
the bed, looking at him. "I want a baby, and when I heard what you were
here for, I realized you were my best chance of having one."

"Ah, yes. That sad little extinction pattern
programmed into your genome, gone even more miswired than usual in your
case."

"The Elogium is an extinction pattern?"

"It is if you can only do it once, in your
lifetime, and bear only one child from it. Obviously your Caretaker did a bit
more than simply make you helpless and dependent on him." He moved toward
her. "And you, poor lost little exploring Kes, without the drugs in your
food to restrict the Elogium to your time of full maturity, completely
short-circuited. No baby for Kes. Probably ever. So sad. Is that what this
is about? Your biological clock is ticking so hard you'll sleep with any
random male-seeming creature who can snap his fingers and give you an Elogium
back?"

"Not entirely. If I asked the Doctor to devote himself
to finding a way to help me reproduce again I'm sure he could come up with
something. But who could I have, on this ship? Neelix? I love him, I always
will... but I've outgrown him. He was my first sweetheart, he gave me the
universe, but he can't look at me and not see the naïve one-year-old I was when
I met him. To him I'll always be a child, until I'm going gray and dying, and
then it will be too late. Tom? Someone else? I might fall in love again-- I
hope I do. But any hybrid child I have will either grow up so slowly that I'll
have to leave them an orphan and never see them grown, or age so fast their
father has to watch them die in a small fraction of his life, or maybe both.
And what kind of heritage is that to give a child? If your mother had only not
been Ocampa, you could have lived 120 years, but now you'll live a fourth of
that, and she died of old age before you were into your adolescence? How could
they not hate me for giving them such a heritage, such a life?"

"Somebody sounds bitter about her lifespan."

"I'm not bitter, but the life I've chosen is a constant
reminder of how soon I'll die. I never thought there was anything strange
about dying at nine, when I lived at home. Now I'm surrounded by people who
will live another eight of my lifespans, on top of what they've already had.
They talk about how hard it is to imagine spending seventy years getting home.
If it takes them seven years I'll probably never see their home. With
good medical care I might make it to fourteen or fifteen like Suspiria's Ocampa
did, but it's still so short. I want to make the most of my life... but I can't."
She looked at her hands, wringing them in frustration. "Being on Voyager
has given me so much opportunity to explore the universe, to see wonders I'd
never have seen if I'd stayed home. But I know I can be more than this. I can
feel it. Yet... it's not like anyone discourages me, but they don't see
me as I am. I'm a mature woman in her prime and the man I love sees me as a
naïve adolescent and the man I work with every day sees me as a callow
apprentice and no one sees that I'm adult. Or that I don't have as much
time as they do."

"And if you gave me a child, you think I'd give you a
longer life?" He circled her slowly, his eyes never leaving her face.

She looked up to meet his gaze. "I'm not asking for
that. I'm asking you to give me a child who'll live forever. I'm asking for
the opportunity to create something eternal. So even if I only live another
five years or so, someone who loves me will remember me until the end of time,
and the things I have done in my life will shape the universe forever."

He broke into a broad grin. "You're ambitious! You
want to have my child because you want to be the mother of a god, don't
you?"

"Doesn't every mother want her children to be the best
they could be?"

"If that were true Kathy should have been jumping at
the chance."

"Well... I think the Captain, all of the humans really,
are afraid of change. Their species has come so far and done so much that they
think that being human, being human the way they're human, is the best
thing they could be. They'd embrace an alien, for love, but not someone as
alien as you are. Not someone who represents such an incredible force for
change. I'm not afraid of change. I know I can be more than I am, I know my
people can be more than they are, and that's part of my goal in life, to become
that, and maybe show others the way, if I can. And if I could have a child
who'd be far far more than I could ever be, that's all right. I like that
idea. I want it."

"You want to be more than you are," he said
softly. "Interesting." He turned his head sideways, studying her,
then straightened himself. "What's in it for me?"

"Well, you're fighting a war. That means you have
enemies, and your enemies are also Q so they have all your powers and they can
find out anything you know, right? So if you have a child with a mortal you're
going to have to protect that mortal, and that child, or your enemies are going
to figure out what you're trying to do and stop you. I mean, that's what
enemies do. I also know that if a Q child is born in a mortal's form
they don't get their powers until they're at the end of adolescence, at least
if it always works the way it did for that human girl I read about. And I know
time doesn't mean as much to you as it does to us, but wouldn't it be easier to
protect a mortal child from your enemies for one year than for
eighteen?"

"It might not work like that. I'd expected to take the
child to the Continuum as soon as it's born."

"If you're really trying to get some new and different
traits into the Continuum, that would be a mistake. You should let your child
be culturally a hybrid if you really want him or her to bring new ideas into
the Continuum. And... technically, haven't you already had a Q who used
to be human? I understand from the records that she had two Q parents, not
one, but if you were trying to introduce different traits into the Continuum
don't you already have some human?"

"Not genetically. Besides. Humans are a very
interesting species. Far more interesting than yours, I'm afraid. They've
grown and expanded themselves to create an alliance of races spanning almost an
eighth of the galaxy. What have you done lately?"

"What have we been allowed to do? Human gods weren't
real. They didn't hold them back."

"Actually some human gods were real. But... you have a
point about not holding them back. No human god or tribal god-image ever
suppressed their lifespan or drastically reduced their reproductive capacity,
at least not in large numbers. Such images were used to control their
scientific thought, though, and their ability to explore the universe around
them, and their ability to explore their own minds. And for the most part they
threw off that control. Can you say the same?"

"I can say that to throw off the control of the
Caretaker was literally to die or become enslaved. I wanted to expand my mind,
to explore the universe around me, and I ended up a slave of the Kazon. If it
hadn't been for Neelix and Voyager my explorations would have ended right
there. Humans never had to fight something like that. I think we
Ocampa could become far, far more than we are if we're allowed a planet where
we can be self-sufficient, not the pawns of any gods or slaves to any conqueror
races. I know the humans are your favorites, Q, but I think other species have
potential too. And I think we Ocampa could have been so much more if Suspiria
and the Caretaker hadn't interfered with us."

"So you want to have a god-child in the hope that
they'll protect your people and give them that chance you want?"

"I don't know if the Continuum allows such things at
all. But if it did, you'd be the right god to have such a child with.
Because I can't imagine you raising your child to make favored mortals into
helpless pets. That's not what you do at all. Is it?"

"No. It's not." He sat down next to her.
"You've given this quite a lot of thought, haven't you."

"Yes. And that's another thing. If Captain Janeway
ever did agree to have your child it'd be out of duty. That's a bad reason to
have a child, and I keep thinking she'd resent that child, or resent the fact
that when the child grows up it will go away and join the Continuum. If she
had a child with you that child would never follow in her footsteps and go into
Starfleet. If I had a child with you that child would follow in my
footsteps, to explore the universe and learn everything they can. And I want
to have a baby-- all by itself that makes me a better mother than Captain
Janeway would be, and I would be able to devote all my attention to our baby,
all of my time, because he or she would be the most lasting thing I would ever
create and I would want to put everything I had into doing a job like
that."

"Yes, I can see you're prime mothering material. The
question is, can you be mother to a Q?" He leaned very close to her,
speaking directly in her ear. "Compassionate Kes. Gentle Kes. Kes the
mature adult woman who lets everyone on this ship treat her like she's barely
out of adolescence. Where's the strength? The fire? The courage? Janeway
has the passion and the stubbornness my child would need to have to
survive in the Continuum. Do you?"

She twisted her head to face him. "I called an
omnipotent being to my quarters to tell him why he should have a baby with me
and you don't think I have courage, or passion?"

He laughed. "Touché. But how stubborn are you?"

"Stubborn enough to escape the Caretaker. That wasn't
very easy. Stubborn enough to survive being a slave, and from what I've read
about you getting turned into a human and losing your powers, I don't think you'd
have survived that all that well. Stubborn enough not to do the wrong thing
and have a baby when I wasn't ready, even though I knew I'd probably never have
another chance. And stubborn enough to sit here arguing with a god that I'm
stubborn." She turned around on the bed to face him, folding her legs
under herself. "I don't like to hurt people's feelings, Q, and I want to
make people happy. If I need to compromise a little, I will, if it makes
people feel better. But I think those are the traits your Continuum
actually needs if you're going to survive a civil war. And if I really
care about something? I'll do it. No one can stop me if I truly believe I
need to do something." She grinned. "Oh, listen to me. Apparently
I'm also a lot more egotistical than I knew I was. Isn't that a trait you need
a Q to have?"

Q laughed again. "Well, you've got that right,
m'dear." He stood up, and offered her his hand. She took it, letting him
help her off the bed. "Your arrogance is delightful. You may even
be able to back it up. But I must ask." He circled behind her,
and spoke directly in her ear again. Humans stood that close to people they
wanted to have sex with. She hoped that meant she was getting somewhere with
him. "Suppose I told you you had a choice. You can have my child, and be
mother to a god. You get to stay aboard your happy little ship with all your
happy little friends, and who knows, you may be able to talk our child into
helping you help the Ocampa to help themselves. Or... you can evolve.
Yourself. Embark on the great unknown. Achieve power, not the power of the Q
by any means but far more than Suspiria's pets had. And to do it you would
have to give up your body, leave your friends behind. You'd embrace the
unknown, alone." He circled around in front of her again. "What
would you choose?"

"Is that my destiny?" she asked softly.

"You have no destiny. Your life is what you make it
into. Choose, Kes. Be mother to an immortal, stay with your friends, help
your people. Or throw everything away and become something more than you are,
yourself. What would you choose?"

She hesitated. "I... don't know. But... I think... I
think I would choose to evolve. No. I know it. I would choose to
evolve."

"Even if it meant you would be alone."

"If I can't be everything I can be, what would have
been the point to being alive?"

Q smiled. It was a genuine, happy smile, as if he were
proud of her. "Oh, well said. Congratulations, my girl. You are indeed
worthy to be the mother of a Q."

"So it wasn't true?"

"Oh, it actually is. Except it's a trap. You have the
potential within you... but unless you recruited a mentor from a more evolved
species to help you through it, it won't do anything except destroy you. You can't
make that transformation on your own... but you've just admitted you would try
it, if the opportunity came up. And that is why you're worthy to be the mother
of a Q. You don't happen to know that it would destroy you; all you know is
that you must be everything you're capable of being. You hunger to
evolve, to know, to grow."

He pulled her close to him, looking down at her fondly.
"Even more than the humans, actually. I think they'll be more successful
than your kind precisely because they don't burn for it like you do, but on the
other hand you would never hold our child back like they might. And unlike
some humans I could mention, you wouldn't turn down omnipotence to keep your
friendships and your nice stable life and your Ocampan nature. You wouldn't
try to break our child down to keep her at your level as some humans have been
known to do to a Q child in their care."

"Her?"

"It'll be a girl. Mortal females seem to mature
emotionally faster than the boys and seem to generally have a greater talent
for keeping the peace. Do you object?"

"No. I'd like to have a girl."

"Then let's do this."

He snapped his fingers, and two things happened. First, his
face and his smell changed, subtly-- he was still recognizable, but now he wore
an Ocampan form instead of a human. Secondly, she was on fire.

The last time this had happened, she had had strange and
desperate food cravings and violent mood swings and she'd turned ugly and she'd
hated the way she'd smelled, so musky and strange. There had been nothing
pleasant about it. Sex for her had always been a mild pleasure, something she
did less because she was driven to it than because it made Neelix happy and she
knew it would feel good if she bothered, but she'd never wanted it for its own
sake, never needed it. The Elogium had been about terrifying bodily changes
and strange pains, not about sex. She'd considered her reproductive options in
an agonizing haze of wild emotions, but none of those emotions had been sexual.

This was different.

Kes gasped. "Is... is this what the Elogium was
supposed to be? If I'd waited long enough to have it?"

"No, Kes. This is what your reproductive cycle would
have been if the Caretaker hadn't interfered." She was naked, and so was
he, and they were on a bed somewhere which wasn't actually her bed which was
just as well because she really didn't want Neelix walking in, and she hadn't
noticed when it had changed but it didn't matter because his hands were running
over her body and she was on fire. She moaned. This almost hurt. But
she wanted more of it. Was this what it felt like to need, like the
humans did, like Neelix had every ten months or so?

Her own smell had changed but it wasn't unpleasant like it'd
been last time, or maybe it just wasn't unpleasant to her. Parts of her body
had swollen until the skin peeled back and when he trailed a finger along them
she arched her whole body and screamed, filling up with so much sensation she
didn't know what to do about it. Between her legs she was hungry,
aching, needing something, and he smelled so good she wanted to devour him.

She threw herself on him, licking, biting, rubbing herself
against him wildly. In between the waves of sensation she managed to gasp out,
"Is this... should Ocampa have always mated like this? Or... you're doing
it... with your powers?"

"No, no, this is all you. I only unlocked your genetic
potential. Well, and skipped all the buildup. You were supposed to undergo
three days of Elogium before reaching this point but who wants to wait that
long?"

"Oh, please... I need... give me..."

Part of her mind was distantly shocked at herself. The
Kazon had raped her when she'd been their slave, of course, something she'd
never told Neelix. Kazon male organs were short but very thick, and they'd
torn her. She'd never wanted anything inside her like that again. Talaxians
had nothing but a very rigid, circular bone and a sphincter muscle; with a
Talaxian woman the bones were supposed to interlock to make a seal, but since
she had nothing like that all she had ever been able to do for Neelix was to
rub her groin against his bone circle and the sweetly sensitive muscle inside
it until it opened and he climaxed. Their sexual incompatibility had made him
perfect for her.

But Ocampa were built more like humans, essentially the same
in fact except that their male organs were longer and thinner. She'd never
actually wanted either an Ocampan man or a human one; anything up inside her
seemed like it would be too much like what the Kazon did. Now, though. Now
every part of the inside of her seemed to be hungry to be touched, to press
against something, to embrace. Oh, she needed it, and all Q was doing was
teasing her, touching her everywhere except in the place and with the organ she
most desperately wanted.

"Do you feel anything?" she whispered hoarsely.
"Do you feel any of this?" He couldn't possibly burn like she did
and still be teasing her like this.

"I'm not the one in a heat cycle," he said. His
eyes were amused. "But I'm enjoying seeing how you react. It generally
takes using my powers to get a human to this point."

She ground her hips into him, fingernails digging into his
shoulders. He wouldn't stop running his hands over her swollen buttocks,
sending shocks of fiery sensation all throughout her, almost pain but she
wanted more, she wanted him to stop, she wanted him never to stop, she wanted
him to fuck her and the words to that effect groaned their way out of
her, too far gone to know how embarrassed she was anymore. Let him be amused,
let him enjoy the power his body had over hers, if only he would give it to her
now.

"I thought you'd never ask," he whispered. Q
rolled her off of him, onto her stomach, and slid onto her back. Kes screamed
as the wonderful silken weight of his thighs pressed against her sensitive
buttocks, pushing them apart. It was too good. She would die. Oh please--

--And then he was inside her, riding her hard, shoving into
the soft fleshy membrane at the far back of her vagina again and again, making
the sphincter there release and let him up all the way into her womb, the tip
of him running over the flesh inside her uterus again and again. The pleasure
radiated all the way up her from her groin and buttocks to the middle of her
abdomen. Thought was disintegrating, and the presence, the deep
powerful rumbling mind of her lover, was growing to swallow her again and she
was opening to it, barriers down, letting a thunderstorm rage into her mind and
dash her sense of self to pieces as her body turned into nothing but a burning
receptacle for pleasure, everything reducing down to the feel of his body
against her and his penis all the way up inside her stroking her where he'd
give her her child and the impossibly loud rhythm of his mind sweeping
everything away. Stars. The abyss, forever extending. The fire of a sun.
Thunder and lightning. A whirlpool, drawing her down.

She blacked out.

Slowly Kes came to herself. She was lying in her own bed, wearing
a decorous nightgown, no sign anymore of the Elogium on her. But her scent had
changed, ripened. She was pregnant.

Smiling softly she put her hand on her stomach, remembering
the exquisite pleasure she'd felt there, the driving need. There was no
more need. She felt boneless, strengthless, completely languid and sated.
Like eating a huge meal and then soaking in a hot tub and then having a great
massage, except better than all of them. If mating was supposed to feel like
that for the Ocampa it was maybe not a wonder that the Caretaker had changed
them; she felt completely sated, and yet she knew she would not be happy to
hear she could never experience that pleasure in her life again.

"Well, the part about letting my mind overwhelm you
won't happen again, obviously, and if you date human males you have to remember
they're not quite long or prehensile enough to get the nerve clusters in your
uterus. But you'll experience another Elogium every three months or so until
you're seven, the way your people were supposed to. I'd advise birth control.
Sibling rivalry could get really ugly when the older sib's omnipotent and the
baby isn't."

She rolled over slightly. Q was sitting in the chair across
the room, human again and wearing his favorite costume, the Starfleet uniform
with a captain's pips. "I'll remember that. Thank you."

"And don't have sex with any more omnipotent beings.
You have no idea how hard you made it for me not to accidentally burn out your
mind, or devour you. Trying to join with me while you were so full of such
delicious sensations... mmm." He shook his head ruefully, but smiling
slightly. "You very nearly ended up a snack. It's a good thing I'm so
fond of your Captain and she's so fond of you."

Kes smiled. "I wasn't afraid. I knew you wouldn't
hurt me."

"Well. No, you're right. I wouldn't have. But
there's really only so much temptation you should expect an entity to be able
to take. Stick to mortals from now on, okay? I wouldn't want you to leave my
bouncing baby daughter an orphan before your usual eyeblink's over."

"I'll definitely do that. Since I don't actually know
any other omnipotent beings."

"Well, if you meet any? They keep their hands off.
You're mine. Mine in the sense of 'other omnipotents keep off', of course, not
in the sense of you can't have your fun with mortal boys. Or girls, or
whatever."

"I think I'll prefer boys, in general."

"Your holo-doctor has a bit of a thing for you, did you
know that? Or that he can reprogram himself to Ocampan, mmm, specifications if
you want?"

Kes grinned. "I'll think about that. Right now... I
think I want to sleep for a week."

"You do that. Need to keep your strength up for the
baby, after all. Do be sure and tell Kathy what she missed out on, all
right?"

Sleepily Kes said, "What will we name her?"

"You know, perhaps it's just tradition talking here,
but I was thinking maybe... Q." He smirked. "You pick her mortal
name, Kesling. Pick something awful so when she comes to the Continuum she's
eager and willing to throw her mortal name away. You have no idea how
confusing it is to be having a perfectly normal conversation with Q about Q, Q
and Q and then have to say 'And then Amanda said...'"

Kes laughed. "I'll think of something."

"And don't name her after Neelix. That'd just be
wrong."

"No. I won't do that."

He was standing suddenly by her bed, and the covers were
tucked in around her. "Sleep tight." Q bent down and kissed her on
the forehead.

The thought of being chastely kissed on the forehead by
someone who'd given her such a thorough fucking only a few minutes before
struck her as very funny, but she was too tired to manage more than a giggle
before she had to close her eyes and snuggle under the covers. A bright flash of
light against her eyelids, and the pressure of Q's presence going away, and she
was alone again.